Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

Happy New Year, Unwatchablers! Oh, what a mountain of crap we have ahead of us as we continue our assault on the upper reaches of the IMDb Bottom 100 list. We begin the new year with the continuation of a potentially disturbing trend, as Phat Girlz joins such other African-American comedies of recent vintage as The Honeymooners, First Sunday, College Road Trip, Meet the Browns and The Perfect Holiday on the list. Now, I’m not defending any of these movies in and of themselves – as you can see from my posts, I think even the best of them is barely mediocre – but the clustering of said flicks at the sad end of the IMDb spectrum does give me pause. I’m not necessarily suggesting that there’s a preponderance of racist IMDb users skewing the numbers, but it may merit further investigation.

I’d do it myself, but I have another, more pressing task, which is watching Phat Girlz. With the above disclaimer out of the way, I feel comfortable in reporting that Phat Girlz is indeed a bad movie, fully deserving of its spot amongst the Unwatchable. I think it would also be a very bad movie if it happened to be about fat white women, but that happens not to be the case.

Plus-size comedian Mo’Nique is Jazmin Biltmore, a sales clerk in the ladies’ clothing department of a high-end retail outfit. Along with fellow full-figured clerk Stacey (Kendra C. Johnson), Jazmin bemoans the lack of fashionable wear for the large ‘n lovely. Jazmin is an aspiring designer who makes her own (hideous, although we’re supposed to think otherwise) clothes, but her snippy manager refuses to schedule her some face time with the store’s buyer (Eric Roberts, no doubt paying off some gambling debts).

Along with Jazmin’s more, uh, conventionally hot cousin Mia (Joyful Drake), the phat girlz take a vacation trip to a resort where they meet up with a group of Nigerian doctors, including dreamy Tunde (Jimmy Jean-Louis), who falls for Jazmin. It seems that Nigerian men prefer what they call “thick madames” – the bigger the woman, the better. I confess, I don’t know if this was a pre-existing stereotype or if it was invented for this film. (All my Nigerian friends are too busy emailing me with offers to stash their millions in my bank account to worry about the ladies.) In fact, not only do these gentlemen prefer the girth, they shun the fit and trim Mia, dismissing her as a “toothpick.” Personally, I’ve never seen a toothpick with a great rack and a smokin’ ass, but perhaps your finer strip clubs make them available to their best customers.

Pardon my sexism! And pardon the sexism of Phat Girlz, in which all the good men are ripped and rich. I guess the movie wouldn’t be teaching us a valuable lesson if it was, say, Cedric the Entertainer falling for Jazmin. The lesson is, of course, that Jazmin is beautiful inside and out. Except I saw little evidence of her inside beauty on display here; she’s mostly loud, obnoxious and shallow, although she goes through bouts of self-pity just to spice things up.

Other than that, writer/director Nnegest Likke’s movie is dull and predictable, but at least it looks like ass. And I don’t mean Mia’s fine, fine ass.



Previously on Unwatchable:
58. Ed
59. Don’t Go in the Woods…Alone!
60. Carry On Columbus
61. Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Movie